[JURIST] The European Court of Human Rights [official website] based in Strasbourg announced Thursday that it has received an application [official backgrounder] from French Muslims asking it to declare the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad [JURIST news archive] in French newspapers an infringement of the non-discrimination provisions of
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[JURIST] US Defense Department [official website] officials said Thursday afternoon that reports originating from earlier statements [JURIST report] by a military spokesman in Iraq that the US intended to close Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison [JURIST news archive] within three months before handing the facility back to the Iraqi government were
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[JURIST] The Tennessee Senate [official website] on Thursday passed a bill [SJR 127 text, PDF] to remove from Tennessee constitutional law any guarantees of a woman's right to abortion. The vote was 24-9. Under Tennessee law, both chambers of the General Assembly must approve the change in two separate votes
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[JURIST] In an open letter [PDF] in the British medical journal Lancet [journal website], more than 250 doctors [signatories, PDF] from seven countries have urged the US government to ensure that detainees at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] are examined by independent physicians and that methods such as force-feeding [JURIST
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[JURIST] An official of Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council has confirmed that Iraqi authorities executed 13 insurgents by hanging Thursday in Baghdad, the first official executions of insurgents carried out in the country since the restoration of the death penalty [JURIST report] in 2004. The insurgents were said to have been
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[JURIST] President Bush has signed legislation [signing statement] to renew the USA PATRIOT Act [PDF text; White House backgrounder], making permanent several sunsetting provisions in the anti-terror law, extending two provisions until 2009, and incorporating a number of new rights protections. Bush approved two separate but related bills: the USA
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[JURIST] Recently released documents reveal that former Associate Deputy Attorney General David S. Kris expressed reservations about the Bush administration's legal rationale [JURIST document] for its warrantless domestic surveillance program [JURIST news archive]. In an e-mail [excerpt, PDF] to an aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [official profile] made public
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[JURIST] CNN is reporting that US Sen. John Warner (R-VA) [official website] has said that Dubai Ports World [corporate website] has decided to transfer operation of six major US ports to a US entity. DP World, a government-owned company from the United Arab Emirates, was set to take over operations
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[JURIST] The ACLU of Northern California [advocacy website] has filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF; press release] in the US District Court of Northern California on behalf of Pacific News Service, seeking a permanent injunction to prevent the California Department of Corrections [official website] and San Quentin Prison from using the
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[JURIST] Reuters is reporting that the US military will close Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison [JURIST news archive] and transfer approximately 4,500 prisoners to other facilities in Iraq, according to a military spokesman. The prison, a torture center under the regime of Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] that again became notorious
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[JURIST] The Federal Bureau of Investigation [official website] has uncovered over 100 violations of wiretapping and intelligence gathering rules in the past two years, including using wiretaps that exceeded the scope authorized by court warrant and obtaining communications with an expired warrant, according to a report [text] released Wednesday by
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[JURIST] Google [corporate website] has agreed to pay up to $90M to settle a class action lawsuit [PDF complaint] filed last year in Arkansas state court, alleging that Google and other online search engine companies overcharged for pay-per-click advertising, in which advertisers pay a fee every time an internet user
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[JURIST] Human rights violations remain a problem in the United States, including illegal wiretapping, police abuse, wrongful convictions, and the world's highest ratio of people behind bars, according to a report released Thursday by China. The Human Rights Record of the US in 2005 [text, in English] was released in
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[JURIST] Leading Tuesday's international brief, the Supreme Court of India [official website] has exercised a rarely used power and sentenced Zahira Sheikh for deliberately retracting her testimony concerning the arson of the Best Bakery [Wikipedia backgrounder] in the state of Gujarat during riots anti-Muslim riots by Hindu civilians that resulted
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[JURIST Europe] Results of a new study released by the Dublin Roman Catholic archdiocese [diocesan website] in Ireland show that while 102 Dublin priests are suspected of abusing children since 1940 and 32 of them are facing lawsuits, only eight have actually been convicted of criminal offenses. Even so, the
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